Praise of the Prenup

It’s perhaps the least attractive quality of the modern marriage. People say their vows and pledge to love each other for their entire lives, but before that, they sign a document protecting their assets from what seems like the inevitable divorce.

After all, if the people really loved each other, would it even cross their minds to sign something that made crystal clear just what they would keep when their relationship broke up?

It can seem like a rather ugly and conflicting thing with the beauty of a new marriage, but the prenuptial agreement serves an important purpose, and it deserves a little more respect.

Think about it this way. Let’s say you own a business. You love this business. It’s the business you always wanted to build, you built it on your own, and it’s one of the most important things in your life. Not only that, you have employees you are responsible for, perhaps investors as well. Lots of people rely on you.

Then you meet someone, you fall in love. You want to share your life with them. All of that can be true. You can plan to spend your whole life with them, but hopefully, you have a friend who has your ear who reminds you: if this doesn’t work out, what happens to your business?

Life is complicated, we all know that marriages have a pretty high failure rate, and while we all enter them thinking we won’t be part of the negative statistics, about 50% of us are wrong.

Is it so unreasonable that you, a successful business owner with responsibilities to others and a love for your business, would want to make sure it’s clear that no matter what happens, that business is yours alone?

After all, what does your new spouse know about the business? If things got ugly, and your spouse demanded half of the business, what would happen to it? Could you run it together or would this dream business fall apart?

It’s easy to see in that example why some people go in for prenups even when they are convinced their marriage will last forever.

It’s even easier to understand that, according to the Law Offices of Baden V. Mansfield, sometimes prenups cover child custody. Imagine going into a new marriage when you already have kids. Don’t you want to make sure even the bitterest divorce won’t see you losing some of your custody rights?

Love and marriage are wonderful parts of our lives, and we want them to last forever. But we also know divorces can get nasty and people can get vengeful. It’s perfectly reasonable for those who have something that is truly worth protecting to ensure nothing can happen to those particular things.

We all go into marriage in this world with our eyes open. We all see the stories of celebrity divorces. We all know people who have been divorced. None of us are naive about our chances. So why do we judge people for being practical in the face of the modern marriage instead of approving of their solid judgment?